PARENT PARTICIPATION

Experience teaches that most students can make little progress unless their parents sustain their participation by setting clear limits and by joining with MA staff in a close constructive alliance. This partnership is critical. From the start, parents play key roles.

While sons or daughters settle down in wilderness programs (or other initial treatment or temporary refuge, e.g., hospital), parents seek advice (e.g., from expert consultants, local therapists or other clinicians) about possible next steps, study what’s published about suitable programs, and make visits to do their own due diligence, so as to choose for a son or daughter a program with a good fit.

Again, once students enroll at MA, parents make room in their busy lives to join weekly family phone calls, to write letters, and to visit Montana to help in treatment, to repair a strained relationship, and to participate in a daughter’s or a son’s ranch life. As students progress, parents welcome home visits to test a new accommodation.

During a student’s tenure at MA, parents participate in three three-day family work-shops and join other parents on special parent-student team trips.